Tag Archives: Virgin Atlantic

YEAH, I AM HEADED out to Bangalore soon enough, and have booked my fright with the “World’s Finest Airline” – Virgin, BA.

They tell me I can’t go through Terminal Five – hooray! I will have to go through Terminal Four – booh!

“Although we have seen a steady improvement at Terminal 5, we want to be sure that our customers can be confident of high service standards when the terminal is handling larger numbers of passengers. Therefore, the majority of our long haul intercontinental flights will continue to operate from Terminal 4 for the time being.”

Hooray!

They’ve put the change back until June. Booh! I was hoping to sample Gordon Ramsey’s “Plain Effing Food” which has had far from rave reviews.

Instead, it will be TGI Fridays and Pizza Hat in Bangalore, as usual. Hooray! ♥

RICHARD “VIRGIN” BRANSON has dropped me a line about those white clad lasses who used to offer to soothe the brows of “Upper Class” travellers.

Since Virgin launched “flat beds”, apparently the in flight treatments are not now valued. “Tastes and preferences have changed especially since the introduction of fully flat beds,” Richie tells me.

He tells me: “We have asked all our In Flight Beauty Therapists to take part in ther review and therefore over the next few weeks we may not have therapists on board. I’m really sorry about this and if you are travelling with us I hope it won’t cause too much inconvenience.”

I have recently experienced in the space of two weeks, twice Virgin’s “new” Premium Economy. The leather seats are very hard on your bum for 12 to 13 hours, and I am seriously considering never travelling with Virgin again in any class.

Why can’t we all just be given park benches or hammocks so we can have a pleasant sleep without any of this flim flam? Virgin charging a huge premium to sleep on the equivalent of a park bench is totally outrageous. The new Premium Economy is not good.

THE ADVERTISING STANDARDS AUTHORITY (ASA) delivered some blows to the rump of Virgin Atlantic today for misleading customers over the availability and service in its “Premium Economy” cabins.

The ASA found that ads Virgin ran gave the impression that new seats weren’t available on something like 50 per cent of its planes, while the “dedicated team” the airline advertised were really people that also served economy passengers.

In fact, we have first hand knowledge of the new cabins and seats, because we flew back in one of them from Mumbai at the weekend. After two hours on the runway and nine hours on the fright, our bum was quite sore. The cabin staff, as always, were very pleasant, although the sight of two tall male cabin staff made us think we had double vision at one point.

But here’s a thing. Although other airlines put their staff up in nice hotels in central London, allowing the crew to see the cities they’re going to, we understand that Virgin puts them up in Slough – not the most salubrious town in the south east. They go shopping in Uxbridge, poor things.

Further, unlike other airlines, Virgin makes the staff trek to Mumbai airport dressed up to the nines in their red suits. For blokes this probably isn’t much of a problem, but a young lady on her own in India is likely to be the subject of what the local press call “eve teasing” – that is to say sexual harrassment.

Anyroad, the ASA told Virgin to remove the dedicated crew claim, to provide a disclaimer that the spiffed up seats weren’t available on all frights, and to make their copy clearer when they ran ads. ♥

I’M FLYING out to Bengaluru this weekend, so thought I would try and use my Virgin miles to make things a little easier.
Fat chance. Spending the miles I’ve got is not easy. The airlines seem to have got themselves into a total spin and have forgotten that the purpose of these schemes is to keep customers loyal. Not frustrate us.
Far as I can see, to spend some of these miles the easiest thing to do is call the Virgin people and get hundreds of vouchers for Virgin wine – which I don’t really want.
There’s probably some kind of rule that prevents you doing that as well. What’s the point of accumulating miles if the airlines put every difficulty in your way in spending them?